As it has been a while since I’ve provided any information on my musical whereabouts, I believe it is high time I make note of recent happenings. In no particular order:

I spent a good portion of last weekend revamping the main SIGHUP website. The previous dark and burgundy iteration had outlasted its welcome with me. I’m pleased with its new clothes, and the structure of the website was tidied somewhat to make it easier to change without updating dozens of pages. looks okay in most browsers. It was a bit off when I checked it on an iPhone, but I can’t find the motivation to care much.

This blog also received a modest visual update to stay thematically aligned with the main site.

A few weeks ago, a new Intelligent Machinery compilation came out.This one was based on using audio from our humble Sounds Found project. The IM compilations will now be released as adjunct projects to the Just Not Normal netlabel. This one was pretty good I have to say, quite varied and lots of interesting approaches to working with field recordings on display. There’s a SIGHUP track entitled “rain, traffic” included. Project can be downloaded for free here.

As part of the website redesign, my old free releases have been wrapped up in zip files for download here.

In May, I participated in a project assembled by Mark Weidenbaum at Disquiet.com called “Despite the Downturn” in which several musicians interpreted an image from an article about the music industry published in The Atlantic. A SIGHUP track entitled “Adieu for industry” is the lead-off track for the compilation. More info on the project at the above linked Archive.org page and at Disquiet.

The SIGHUP material on Soundcloud is in constant flux. The initial set of modular-based drone tracks have been retired for now, and a new set of rhythm-based tracks are currently on display. An unrelated track, entitled “Woodfire” is also there, uploaded last weekend.

All three SIGHUP commercial releases are now a) released under a Creative Commons license, and b) sold as pay-what-you’d-prefer, with a minimum of $1 USD. I’ve decided to return to CC licensing for no reason other than it might encourage someone unknown to me to do something cool with the audio, like use it as a video soundtrack or make a remix. I haven’t sold anything in a while, and so figured the flexible pricing might encourage folk to get all three at once. I’m more eager to reach listeners than make money, so I don’t see the harm.

A name change is pending. At least a name modification. I’ll be keeping SIGHUP, but will alternately start using its elongated form Signal Hangup when I so choose. A primary reason for doing this is that, when speaking about the project to someone, SIGHUP sounds odd and usually requires me to restate more than once. In a loud setting it becomes near impossible to convey SIGHUP, as it turns out. I guess hard G, aspirated H combos weren’t made for the Central Canadian accent.

I think that covers most things. This also makes SIGHUPblog post 100 (although some have been deleted over the years, so there have been more. But there are currently only 100 active on this site). See you in Spring 2011!